After careful consideration I have decided to transfer all hardware review activities to a new domain. I purchased Hardwareasylum.com in 2012 and have been working hard to build a new and improved Ninjalane on that domain. If you are reading this you have reached one of the archived articles, news, projects and/or reviews that were left behind during the site migration.
Please update your bookmarks and be sure to visit the new and improved Ninjalane at Hardwareasylum.com
EVGA X58 SLI LE Motherboard Review
Author: Dennis Garcia
Published: Monday, July 06, 2009
Board Layout and Features Cont.
Drive connections are one thing that many of us take for granted. Legacy technologies such as 3.5" floppy drives and IDE have been absent from current Intel chipsets for quite some time, however given that these legacy drives are still present in 80%+ of PC's on the market there is a real need for motherboard mfgs to provide support for them. As you can imagine this is an additional financial burden that mobo maker has to consume. EVGA has been brave enough to provide a great motherboard that has no onboard IDE or Legacy floppy connection. In its place you will find only 6 SATA ports.
EVGA has provided power, reset and CMOS clear buttons for us test benchers, these simple controls have become quite common on high-end motherboards and are a welcome addition. Both buttons feature LED lights, the power button will light up red when the system is active. The orange light on the reset button actually shows HDD activity. CMOS clear can be found next to the power and reset and also on the ATX connector for easy access when your system is assembled.
Overclockers will enjoy this next feature, voltage test points so you can verify each of the critical voltages externally with your own meter. There are many reasons for this; the biggest one is related to variances in component resistance that will throw off the software monitors and give you inaccurate readings.
Overclockers will enjoy this next feature, voltage test points so you can verify each of the critical voltages externally with your own meter. There are many reasons for this; the biggest one is related to variances in component resistance that will throw off the software monitors and give you inaccurate readings.
The front panel connector section of the motherboard is pretty typical for a trimmed down motherboard. Here you have access to the onboard IEEE1394 connections as well as 4 extra USB ports and handy debug LED. The debug LED doubles as a temperature readout after the system has completely gone thru its posting process.
There are 6 fan headers on this board including the 4 pin CPU fan header. These fans can be monitored from the BIOS. Some other features to make note of, the motherboard cooling consists of 3 static and ornate heatsinks and no fancy heatpipes to link them together. Because of this you can easily remove any one of them and replace it with an aftermarket cooler without having to figure out how the rest of the board will be cooled.
